462 Social-Cognitive Basis of Language Development Bibliography Bakeman R & Adamson L (1984). ‘Coordinating attention to people and objects in mother–infant and peer–infant interactions.’ Child Development 55, 1278–1289. Baldwin D (1993). ‘Early referential understanding: young children’s ability to recognize referential acts for what they are.’ Developmental Psychology 29, 1–12. Bates E (1979). The emergence of symbols: cognition and communication in infancy. New York: Academic Press. Bruner J (1983). Child’s talk. New York: Norton. Budwig N (2000). ‘Language, practice, and the construction of personhood.’ Theory and Psychology 10(6), 769–786. Carpenter M, Nagell K & Tomasello M (1998). ‘Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age.’ Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 255. Goldberg A (1995). Constructions: a construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Golinkoff R M (1983). ‘The preverbal negotiation of failed messages.’ In Golinkoff R M (ed.) The transition from prelinguistic to linguistic communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Harris P (1996). ‘Desires, beliefs, and language.’ In Carruthers P & Smith P (eds.) Theories of theories of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Langacker R (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar (vol. 1). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Pan B A & Snow C E (1999). ‘The development of conversation and discourse.’ In Barrett M (ed.) The development of language. London: UCL Press. 229–250. Tomasello M (1988). ‘The role of joint attentional process in early language development.’ Language Sciences 10, 69–88. Tomasello M (1995). ‘Language is not an instinct.’ Cognitive Development 10, 131–156. Tomasello M (1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tomasello M (2000). ‘Do young children have adult syntactic competence?’ Cognition 74, 209–253. Tomasello M (2001). ‘Perceiving intentions and learning words in the second year of life.’ In Bowerman M & Levinson S (eds.) Language acquisition and conceptual development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 132–158. Tomasello M (2003). Constructing a language: a usagebased theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tomasello M & Rakoczy H (2003). ‘What makes human cognition unique? From individual to shared to collective intentionality.’ Millennial Perspective Series in Mind and Language 18, 121–147. Socialization J Cromdal, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. In anthropology, sociology, as well as social psychology, studies of children are traditionally found under the heading of ‘socialization.’ In the widest sense, this term refers to an indefinite array of social events taking place in ordinary life surroundings as well as in institutional settings, representing events through which people become skilled in the ways of society. However, researchers within the social and behavioral sciences have settled for a much narrower conceptualization, typically treating socialization as the process through which adults secure the transition of the youngest generation from childhood into ordinary membership of society. For the early sociologists such as Durkheim and Parsons (see Durkheim, Emile (1858–1917)), who conceived of society largely in moral terms, socialization is primarily a matter of the individual internalizing a set of norms and values crucially shared by members of society. For sociologists and psychologists alike, socialization is the process through which the individual acquires a sense of a social ‘self.’ Within traditional social anthropology (e.g., Mead, 1930), this process is taken to also include the development of particular skills in relation to the socioeconomic order of a culture. Thus, the notion of socialization has provided sociologists and anthropologists with a way of accounting for the maintenance and reproduction of social order, and furnished psychologists with an axiomatic for understanding the individual’s social as well as moral development (Tholander and Cromdal, 2005). Norms, Rules, and the Maintenance of Social Order One of the central tasks of early sociology was to explain how societies are held together. Assuming that humans are born into society as virtually asocial beings, Durkheim (1979) came to the realization that the notion of mutual economic interdependence, with its resulting division of labor among members of society, is not enough to account for the maintenance and reproduction of social order. For society to be possible, there must be an underlying consensus Socialization 463 among its members concerning the most central values and beliefs that inform and crucially constrain social behavior. This assumption raised questions about how society’s central norms and values are transmitted across generations, how in becoming part of society, children come to internalize these most central features of social life. For Durkheim, this task is handled by society’s institutions: the family, the church and most importantly the school, which is responsible for the moral education of the child. (see Institutional Talk). Following up on these ideas, Parsons (1951) sought to elaborate how societal norms and values are translated into concrete rules of behavior, i.e., how they inform and essentially govern people’s actions. Central in his work is the notion of ‘value orientation patterns,’ which allow individuals to infer the expected forms of behavior from the social roles participants occupy in a variety of settings. This allows people not only to recognize what is expected of them when acting within their roles but also to assess other people’s role performance. This is a crucial aspect of the normative nature of social structures, as it enables society’s actors to impose social control on each other. Moreover, it allows adult members of society to socialize the children. In this way, the processes of social control and socialization operate within the social system toward an ideal state of equilibrium. A Developmental Orientation A notable feature of these early works as well as their subsequent applications is that the concept of socialization is almost exclusively applied to the study of children. In his work on society as a social system, Parsons readily acknowledged that socialization is a life-long process, only to argue later on the same page that sociological inquiry should remain focused on childhood, or the period of ‘primary socialization.’ It is during this period in life, Parsons argued, that the ‘major value-orientation patterns,’ comprising normative patterns of behavior, are ‘laid down’ within the social actor (Parsons, 1951: 208). These orientations to shared values were seen as foundational to an individual’s ‘basic personality structure,’ and as such they would not undergo substantial change later in life. Among the specific processes of socialization, Parsons identifies such mechanisms as reward-punishment, instruction, and a set of mechanisms of value-acquisition, of which the most important one is the child’s identification with the adult. Parsons’s integration of various streams of concurrent psychological reasoning within his systemic theory of society suggests that socialization theory is not a strictly sociological enterprise. Indeed, it provides something of a paradigmatic perspective for social and behavioral studies of children. Hence, issues of socialization have been addressed by virtually all the major psychological theories of development, and there are few major works within social anthropology that do not attend to the problem of cultural transmission across generations, often referred to as ‘enculturation.’ Common to all the traditional – and much of the contemporary – socialization research is a view of childhood as a period of transition, during which children gradually become (or fail to become) full-fledged members of society. In this way, socialization research trades on massively commonsensical and normative notions of children and childhood. At the same time, it provides a scientific foundation for these cultural beliefs. Socialization: Critical Perspectives One of the earliest criticisms of socialization theory appeared in Wrong’s (1961) essay on the ‘oversocialized conception of man,’ in which he argues that the notion of socialization is used as an automatic account for any queries of social order:– Why does society hold together? – Because people are socialized to follow common rules of behavior. The problem here, according to Wrong, is the implication that, having been socialized into society, people have little choice but to follow its rules. Apart from its social determinism, this view renders sociological inquiry trivial. Similar problems were addressed in Garfinkel’s early ethnomethodological investigations (1967), in which he points out that sociological theory construes the member of society as a ‘judgmental dope,’ who ‘produces the stable features of the society by acting in compliance with preestablished and legitimate alternatives of action that the common culture provides’ (Garfinkel, 1967: 68). Garfinkel then proposes that in billing the member of society as a judgmental dope, social science scholars employ a variety of (research) procedures, designed to preclude the practical concerns of members in actual social situations. The concept of socialization can then be seen as an analytical resource to this end, in that it allows researchers to gloss over (Mackay, 1975), rather than investigate, the lived features of cultural (re)production. Indeed, the invisibility of actual practices of socialization is already built into Parson’s sociological theory, in which he proposes that ‘many features of the actual process of socialization of the child are obscure’ (Parsons, 1951: 214). A related set of problems in socialization theory pertains to the specific status of the child as social 464 Socialization actor, including, as we have noted, a general research bias toward issues of development. As Speier (1971: 188) points out: sociologists (and this probably goes for anthropologists and psychologists) commonly treat childhood as a stage of life that builds preparatory mechanisms into the child’s behavior so that he is gradually equipped with the competence to participate in the everyday activities of his cultural partners, and eventually as a bona fide adult member himself. Speier refers to this view as the ‘classical’ formulation of socialization because, although employed by researchers for ‘scientific’ purposes, it is rooted in folk beliefs about children. These beliefs form a set of ideological conventions, according to which children are treated as incomplete social participants, as ‘incipient beings’ (Durkheim, 1979). On this view, children’s social skills are thought of in terms of incompetence, or at best, pre-competence, and therefore, children need to be guided into social life by adults. Jenks (1997) proposes that most social theories adopt this adult-oriented perspective on children and therefore ‘spectacularly fail to constitute the child as an ontology in its own right’ (Jenks, 1997: 10). We should note that the adult perspective not only casts children as less-than-competent participants in society’s business but also ascribes the problem of participation in social life to the child (Speier, 1976). One important implication of this interpretive imposition is that children’s actions will be understood in ways that conform to, ratify and elaborate the biased, adult-folklore-oriented view of what goes on between children and adults. This in turn inevitably precludes not only any adequate understanding of children’s social worlds but also inhibits an understanding of the joint interactional work in which both parties to adult-child exchanges must necessarily engage. Ironically, it is precisely these situated practices of action and reasoning that form the very basis of socialization (see Edwards, 1995, and Waksler, 1991, for further discussions). These concerns led Speier (1971) to respecify the very notion of socialization as above all a matter of developing skills for participation in social events. This opens up for empirical investigation of socialization from within social events, by attending to the organization of talk-in-interaction. In this vein, pioneering ethnomethodological works by Sacks (1992, Vol. 1, Lecture 2, Spring 1966: et passim), Speier (1976), and Mackay (1975) demonstrate how children manage to participate in talk under overwhelmingly restricted conversational rights with adults. (see Ethnomethodology; Sacks, Harvey (1935–1975).) In later years, analysts of social interaction have focused on the organization of talk within a range of activities within the peer group such as negotiations of local alignments and friendship relations (Goodwin, 1990; Whalen, 1995), teasing (Tholander, 2002), and the management of conflict (Cromdal, 2004; Maynard, 1985). (see Organizational Discourse; Institutional Talk.) The focus on socialization within the peer group arose out of an increasing sociological interest in children’s play. As Sutton-Smith pointed out, ‘‘Peer interaction is not a preparation for life. It is life itself’’ (1982: 75). In this vein, interpretive sociologists and social psychologists argued that it is through the management of peer group concerns that children appropriate the values and beliefs of the adult world, and it is through these necessarily communicative practices that children produce their own unique peer culture (e.g., Corsaro and Eder, 1995; Harris, 1995). The necessity of studying the communicative practices within the peer group is also highlighted by language-oriented ethnographers, who not only demonstrate how children are socialized through language but, crucially, demonstrate how the children are socialized to use language appropriately within distinct social groups (e.g., Ochs and Schieffelin, 1995). These studies, commonly known as ‘language socialization,’ provide a critical perspective on the relation among language, culture, and communicative practice, and its role in children’s language acquisition. In 1990, James and Prout outlined a social constructionist framework for the study of children and childhood. This interdisciplinary enterprise was designed to revitalize and redefine the status of childhood on the social studies research agenda, and was accordingly launched as a ‘new paradigm for the study of childhood’ (James and Prout, 1990: 5). Echoing the early ethnomethodological critique, researchers embracing this orientation strongly dispute the traditional view that studies of childhood are interesting only insofar as they tell us something about future adulthood, along with its allied notion of children as passive recipients of culture. Instead, within this approach – sometimes referred to as ‘the new social studies of childhood’ – researchers insist that children be recognized as social agents, capable of constructing their own social worlds. A further interest is in understanding the relations between children’s social worlds and society’s institutions, such as the family, school, or any other of the adult-dominated spheres of social life in which children routinely participate. Stressing the constructed nature of cultural conceptions of children and childhood, researchers clearly Socialization 465 recognize that this process of construction is part and parcel of everyday interactional practices. However, although James and Prout emphasize the need for empirical studies to equal the theoretical development of this enterprise, analyses of situated interactions through which children create their peer cultures within society have hitherto been scarce. Hence, the current challenge for studies of children and childhood lies in exploring the overwhelmingly language saturated practices through which children take part in society’s business. See also: Durkheim, Emile (1858–1917); Ethnomethodolo- gy; Institutional Talk; Organizational Discourse; Organizational Discourse; Sacks, Harvey (1935–1975). Bibliography Corsaro W & Eder D (1995). ‘Development and socialization of children and adolescents.’ In Cook K, Fine G & House J (eds.) Sociological perspectives on social psychology. New York: Allyn & Bacon. 421–451. Cromdal J (2004). ‘Building bilingual oppositions: codeswitching in children’s disputes.’ Language in Society 33, 33–58. Durkheim E (1979). Essays on morals and education. Pickering W S F (ed.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Edwards D (1995). Discourse and cognition. London: Sage. Garfinkel H (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Goodwin M H (1990). He-said-she-said: talk as social organization among black children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 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London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Sacks H (1992). Lectures on conversation. Oxford: Blackwell. Speier M (1971). ‘The everyday world of the child.’ In Douglas J D (ed.) Understanding everyday life. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 188–217. Speier M (1976). ‘The child as conversationalist: some culture contact features of conversational interactions between adults and children.’ In Hammersley M & Woods P (eds.) The process of schooling: a sociological reader. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 98–103. Sutton-Smith B (2006). ‘A performance theory of peer relations.’ In Borman K (ed.) The social life of children in a changing society. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 65–77. Tholander M (2002). ‘Cross-gender teasing as a socializing practice.’ Discourse Processes 34, 311–338. Tholander M & Cromdal J (2005). ‘Children, morality and interaction—an introduction.’ In Cromdal J & Tholander M (eds.) Children, morality and interaction. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science. 1–34. 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